[ He was going to explain things, Tucker, give him a little credit -- he knows more than anyone that he and Carolina have a thousand secrets to keep and hold too much back. They have their reasons, and there's things that they'll never tell, but when if they expect you to trust them, then Wash thinks it's only fair that you learn why. ]

I don't expect you to blindly trust me. [ But Wash hopes he's earned it. ] You should know what happened.

[ There are still some details he won't go too fully into, Tucker, but he'll try to give you as much as you need. ]

It was Sigma. His AI. Meant for Carolina, at first, but it was reassigned to him. [ How does he even begin to explain? What the Meta is, what it was, it wasn't even really a monster or some creature or some thing, it was just -- broken, fragments, a collection of pieces, barely held together at all. ] Just think of it this way. You know what Epsilon did to me, don't you?

[ Not in the details, and it's clear from how Wash immediately moves on from that, that now is not the time to ask about those details, and there is in fact no time to ask about those details. ]

Epsilon wasn't actually with me for very long. They knew something was wrong, and it was removed.

Maine's AI was just as harmful, if not even worse. [ In vastly different ways, but that's detail Wash might not want to go into if he can help it. His fingers curls lightly into his palms, uncurl, an obvious tension working through his body. He should have known. He should have fucking known. ] And Sigma was never removed.